---
title: "XY problem (xyproblem)"
url: https://perrotta.dev/2024/06/xy-problem-xyproblem/
last_updated: 2025-09-17
---


When asking questions or filing bugs / feature requests in the internet, I often
refer to these two invaluable resources:

- [How To Ask Questions The Smart Way](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) by Eric S. Raymond
- [XY problem](https://xyproblem.info): The XY problem is asking about your
  attempted solution rather than your actual problem. This leads to enormous
  amounts of wasted time and energy, both on the part of people asking for help,
  and on the part of those providing help.

Here is a recent example: https://github.com/23andMe/Yamale/issues/250

> https://xyproblem.info / Motivation: Somewhat related to #228: It's not
> currently possible to exclude files from a given directory. In the context of
> developing Kubernetes GitOps repository this is often an issue. The ability to
> run yamale on individual files would address it.